The increasing trend of late pregnancies

The information and technology era of today has put our future at risk, according to some medical experts. These experts feel that the society at large demands way more from women in terms of quality education and decent jobs than it did a decade ago. If this situation merely had personal repercussions, it wouldn’t be our place to raise fingers. However, research has shown that not only does the chance of conceiving after 40 drop to 5%, it raises the risk of abnormalities in newborns and risks during delivery by double digit figures.

Therefore, concerns voiced by medical practitioners over this trend is valid, and rightly so, because the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists shares this view. According to this institute, women who conceive after an age of 35 increase the chances of birth defects in children by 30%. This same figure is a mere 2% in women who gave birth at an early age, preferably in the early to mid twenties.

Even though this trend has been witnessed worldwide, in western countries that put a lot of importance on independent and individualistic lifestyles, late pregnancies are commonplace and along with it are issues related to childbirth, impaired senses and genetic syndromes.

Risk of Cerebral Palsy in childbirth after the age of 35

Of the risks involved in childbirth when the mother is above 30 years of age, Cerebral Palsy tops the list. To understand why and how these newborns become victim to CP, one needs to understand the causes and symptoms of CP.

Cerebral Palsy is a complex disease. Most of the reasons surrounding this condition are unknown and still a mystery, just like the remedies for it are. The most prominent causes for CP are a complicated birth and a premature birth, both of which become more common as the mother’s age increases. This is because the strength of a woman to carry a fetus highly depends on her age and is tied to the complexity of the delivery process. During a distressed birth, the oxygen supply to the delicate parts of a child’s brain is hampered, thus resulting in damaged tissue and impaired muscle movement.

The way forward for a healthy future

What to do then? Defy medicine or defy society? The ideal solution lies in a balance. Neither can women ignore their social needs nor their personal needs. Some may even argue that even before the diseases mentioned above were given a name, they existed in one form or the other. Why then is it so much of a problem now?

There is no completely satisfying answer to this pressing question. Research shows several examples of children born with CP or Down’s Syndrome, both of which plague more than 400 babies in Australia every year. Brain injuries inflicted on newborns are much more pronounced with older mothers and the fact of the matter is that in the world we live in today, from our food to our clothes, everything is synthetic instead of being natural. Therefore, where the role of man in medicine has been positively influential, it has also played its part in doubling the occurrence of mutational abnormalities.